Thursday

First things first: Sunshine started a spate of book posts, memes summarizing the Old Year, shortly before the recent New Year's holiday. Even though I wasn't tagged to do so, I meant to contribute back before the end of the weekend. But I was sick and didn't feel like getting around to it. I went ahead and wrote it eventually today, for completeness' sake, and then I indeed post-dated the entry to back before the first of the year since I had a hole there and I meant to do it back then, anyway. Since interested parties might not have known to look there otherwise, I thought I'd bring it up. Interested? Last night after Christmas Two, Sunshine put her work clothes on (I changed red T-shirts) and we headed over to the airport to pick up a band arriving as part of a cultural event. I've been here for two and a half months and am now part of the welcome wagon. Sunshine is the official part though, so she actually got to enter the airport with a little sign that said "Livingstons" on it. I waited outside with our official driver and the rest of the teeming Saigon welcome wagons, craning looks through the glass doors that separated us all from the baggage carousels. The wait was long. I watched many tourists being hustled along by industrious taxi hacks who attempt to negotiate a price to town even though every cab in Saigon has a working meter. My favorite moment came when some smart team of Japanese flight attendants sliced through the crowd, ten or twelve of them, in diverse-but-matching uniforms, scarves, and hairdos pent up in pairs of identical blue chopsticks at identical angles; they were tall, and severe, and had the posture of superheroes. [Cavin]